Toshiba R400 and wireless dock
Wow, there's literally a radio show going on right behind me in this room; Michael Garfield is interviewing someone from Palm as I quietly blog this. Just before meeting James here at the CES Broadcast Booth, I swung by the Toshiba booth for all of three minutes to catch up with the innovative and well designed R400 Tablet PC shown above. The 12.1-inch LED backlight display is a beauty!
I called this unit well designed because the look and feel is almost Apple-like in a glossy white way. I was very impressed by this one-line display that shows system info via the Windows SideShow technology.
Most impressive of course was the wireless dock that James mentioned earlier this week. According to the Toshiba reps, this is a true USB 2.0 wireless unit capable of 480 Mbps transfer speeds. The dock isn't meant to be an access point, but instead creates a circular wireless area around three to four feet in diameter. Essentially, all of your peripherals get connected to the dock and when your R400 is in range, it automagically connects to them via the speedy wireless connection.
The throughput is more than fast enough to pipe audio and video through the ether as well; I watched a DVD movie clip that was streamed from the dock to the R400 with no wires. Watch for the dock in the second quarter of 2007; I asked about the price, but couldn't get anyone to comment on that. Looks like the base R400 will put you in the mid-two-thousand range, but you're getting a very capable Tablet that runs Vista like a pro.
Here's a high level pic of how a typical wireless dock setup with the R400 might look.
Well designed because it looks glossy white like an Apple?! Please tell me your joking. I am so tired of hearing about how nice looking macs are. I know I cannot be the only person completely disgusted by the white look. Macs are ugly and any company that adopts that look loses my business.
Posted by: Pam | January 09, 2007 at 02:08 PM
Wireless Dock??? Okay, okay, but does it recharge Wirelessly too?? Oh no I hear you say.. So, then i have to plug in cables anyway. Hmm.
Posted by: Mal | January 10, 2007 at 05:46 AM
But the big problem is that it's using a very slow processor. 1.2Ghz is real slow and when it comes to database apps on the tablet, it will really be a nightmare. I don't mind buying this baby if it's atleast 1.6Ghz Core Duo processor.
Posted by: Amrith | January 12, 2007 at 05:56 AM
The R400 is an expensive machine, but I really like the wireless docking. The alerts display is too tiny to be of much use in my opinion. Here's a video demo of some of the R400's features:
http://www.notebooks.com/?p=420
Posted by: Xavier | January 29, 2007 at 12:48 PM